Of
course, when the plan was first drafted several years ago, it was accepted
that this infusion of gold into the State’s finances and her private
economy would take time, and that sufficient time would be available
for the reform to move forward at a reasonable pace. Now, however, the
urgency of the situation requires that the process be speeded up in
the following way:

•
The State will hold the gold in her own depository, controlled by a
State Militia that will be revitalized in the same statute that provides
for use of the alternative gold currency.

•
Within 30 to 45 or so days of the enactment of the enabling legislation,
all members of the Militia—which will include every able-bodied
adult from 16 to 60 years of age—will be required to obtain an
electronic gold currency account as part of his or her Militia duty.

•
Also within those 30 to 45 days, each and every businessman in the State—each
of whom is a member of the Militia, too—will be required to set
alternative prices and for his goods and services in both gold and Federal
Reserve Notes as part of his Militia duty.

•
Except with respect to the payment of particular taxes, no one will
be required actually to use gold, rather than Federal Reserve Notes,
in their financial transactions. Yet, the State will have enabled her
citizens to do so, and will have established an alternative price-structure
in gold for both her own financial affairs and for her entire private
economy. At that point, the State and her citizens could, to
whatever degree they wished, voluntarily go off the Federal
Reserve Note standard to a pure gold standard. And, presumably,
the State and increasingly large percentages of her citizens would do
so, in pursuit of their own rational economic and political self-interests.

Why
would implementation of this plan be advantageous?

•First and foremost, adoption of such an alternative gold currency
would be an act of foresight. It would recognize that resuscitation
of the Federal Reserve System is impossible, and that acceptance of
a new global fiat currency and central bank to replace that System would
be intolerable.

•Second, and no less important, adoption of an alternative gold
currency would be an act of scientific insight, because it
would introduce a currency the objective value of which could always
be verified or falsified immediately upon inspection.
That objective value would be a fixed weight of gold. It would
be an objective value, because an ounce of gold is an ounce
of gold is an ounce of gold—everywhere throughout the world, no
matter what economic, political, or social conditions prevailed. Under
this plan, a specific weight of gold, and only that weight of gold,
would become the State’s official monetary unit. Thus, the
holder of the currency himself would not only own but would actually
possess the gold, because gold would be the currency.

Contrast
this with a Federal Reserve Note. Even when such a note was “redeemable”
in gold, some Federal Reserve regional bank or the United States Government
actually owned and possessed the gold that “backed” the
note; and the holder of the note had no more than a claim to redemption.
Only upon actual redemption did actual title to and possession of the
gold change hands. And that right of redemption was eventually cancelled,
both domestically and internationally. As to gold, then, Federal Reserve
Notes proved to be, as John Exter so well put it, “an I.O.U. nothing
currency”, made possible because the “currency” and
the gold were separate things, under the control of different
people. But with gold as money, nothing is owed and the holder of
the currency holds the gold, so no debt of redemption can ever
be repudiated.

•Third, also in the scientific spirit, an alternative gold currency
would allow for more than one experiment to be conducted—indeed,
as many as fifty separate experiments in each of the several States
would be possible. If any single experiment should fail, it would do
so only locally, not nationally. If it succeeded, it could be expanded
quickly and easily enough elsewhere. And by the process of judicious
trial and error, constant improvements on any initial success would
be possible. Moreover, even if politically influential factions could
succeed in stopping the adoption of an alternative currency in one State,
they would be unlikely to be able to exercise the political clout necessary
to suppress it in every other State as well. And if they did not stop
it everywhere, the market would prove the theory somewhere, and then
expand its application everywhere.

• Fourth, adoption of an alternative gold currency could be
accomplished incrementally and gradually, allowing the market
to set and equilibrate prices as more and more people employed the new
currency in preference to Federal Reserve Notes. No sudden, economically
disorienting jump from Federal Reserve Notes to gold would have to occur.

•Fifth, quite unlike the Federal Reserve System and its bills
of credit, an alternative currency consisting of gold would be fully
constitutional. The Supreme Court has already ruled that the States
are not bound, and constitutionally cannot be bound, to use
as their currency a currency emitted by Congress—in particular,
that they may choose to employ gold and silver in preference to irredeemable
paper currency, even when Congress has declared that paper currency
to be “legal tender”.[20] Thus, the
adoption of an alternative gold currency would return each State to
the rule of constitutional law and federalism with respect to money.

•Sixth, introduction of an alternative gold currency would not
depend upon a State’s having any gold in her Treasury
at the beginning of the process. Indeed, adoption of such an alternative
currency would bring gold into the State’s Treasury right away.
Constitutionally, of course, the States cannot coin money.[21]
Only Congress enjoys the governmental power “[t]o coin Money”.[22]
But, inasmuch as an alternative gold currency could—and initially
should—consist of bullion, not coin, no State would be dependent
upon the assistance of Congress and the United States Treasury in the
adoption of such a currency.

•Seventh, employment of an alternative gold currency would not
involve a State in the rat’s nest of central economic planning.
A State would not be required to attempt to regulate the supply of money
against a so-called “price level”, to fix interest rates,
or to engage in any of the other political-cum-economic manipulations
characteristic of a central bank. Whatever amount of gold the people
desired to use as their alternative currency would become currency;
and the free market would then rationally establish and mutually adjust
the prices in gold of all goods and services.

•Eighth, adoption of an alternative gold currency would not
serve only one set of selfish special-interest groups at the expense
of the rest of society. In particular, adoption of such a currency would
facilitate the absolute separation of private banking from the government,
on a State-by-State basis. No longer would bankers and their clients
in “the financial community” enjoy the status of an economically
and politically specially privileged class.

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•Ninth, although it would bring about the politically radical
end of separating private banks from the government—which “the
financial community” would vehemently oppose—adoption of
an alternative gold currency would not expose America to the economic
equivalent of “mutual assured destruction”. At present,
any attempt to reform the monetary and banking systems “from the
top down” can likely be thwarted by the bankers’ threat
to precipitate an economic collapse. “Yes”, the bankers
warn, “you can destroy us. But, more importantly, we can destroy
you. If we go down, we will take the economy with us. Without us, you
will have no currency, no credit, and thereby no means of maintaining
a high level of economic activity. So we have you by the throat. There
is nothing you can do but to continue to allow us to loot society, and
then to bail us out when our schemes threaten to implode or explode.”
With an alternative gold currency, however, monetary reform would not
come “from the top down”, by attempting to abolish the Federal
Reserve System at one fell swoop and thereby throwing the economy into
chaos. Rather, reform would come gradually and systematically “from
the bottom up”, by introducing a sound currency into the free
market on a State-by-State basis, in free competition with the Federal
Reserve System. If the banking cartel and its clients should respond
aggressively, they would merely hoist themselves on their own pétard,
because in any State which had adopted an alternative currency the people
would no longer be dependent upon the banks for currency. Whatever the
bankers might then do in a destructive vein would only drive the market
farther and faster in the direction of the alternative currency. Rather
than mutually assured destruction, such actions would bring about the
bankers’ assured destruction.

•Tenth, on the other hand, if adoption of an alternative currency
on a State-by-State basis showed promise, with more and more people
using that currency to the exclusion of Federal Reserve Notes in more
and more transactions, the banks would be forced to compete. At least
some of them might try to generate a new currency “redeemable”
in, or “backed” by, gold. Exactly how they might do this,
or even if they could do it, one cannot predict, because such a new
bank currency would have to be as secure as the alternative currency,
which would require that it not be based on fractional reserves. Yet,
if even some of the banks could move in that direction, it would tend
to stabilize their system, and perhaps allow for its orderly long-term
transformation or liquidation, rather than sudden collapse.

To
be sure, the adoption of an alternative gold currency would face political
hurdles. For example, adoption of gold as currency at the State level
will be complicated by claims of the General Government to tax exchanges
of gold for Federal Reserve Notes, and exchanges of gold for goods and
services (which are now erroneously treated as some sort of “barter”
transactions). In the midst of a nationwide economic breakdown, however,
any State which adopted an alternative gold currency would be in an
especially favorable bargaining position, and would probably be able
to negotiate an accommodation with the United States Treasury.

Even
if prudence did not prevail at the bargaining table, the State could
sue the President of the United States, the Secretary of the Treasury,
and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, in the
original jurisdiction of Supreme Court,[23]
for their failures to maintain all forms of United States currency at
par—which now should be about $42-2/9 per ounce of gold, not some
$1,300.00, $1,400.00, or more.[24] With the publicity
such a suit would receive in the context of the present economic crisis,
the matter would become a political issue to end all political issues—in
comparison to which President Andrew Jackson’s fight with the
second Bank of the United States would appear to have been an exchange
of pleasantries. Under such circumstances, would the Justices of the
Supreme Court dare to rule that the States are not entitled to protect
their own people from economic ruin caused by the incompetence or corruption
of the politicians, bureaucrats, bankers, and financial manipulators
in Washington, D.C., and New York City? Would the Justices
dare to deny the people the right to ward off these vampires with “a
cross of gold”?

And
if the Justices did rule against the States’ attempts to bring
about meaningful monetary reform, would not their obstructionism sweep
away the very last shred of credibility in Washington, D.C.? In that
event, would not the States and their citizens then put into action
Nancy Reagan’s dictum—“Just say ‘No!’”—and
simply refuse to comply with all demands from the General Government
for payments of unconstitutional taxes that hindered the use of the
alternative currency—and then back up those refusals in the most
effective manner?

Actually,
for numerous reasons, the Justices might be expected to rule in favor
of the States: First, (as explained above) they could simply
fall back on judicial precedents favorable to the States. Second,
they would surely recognize their own inability to correct the underlying
problem in the course of overruling those precedents and deciding the
cases against the States; whereas, in reliance on those precedents,
the States could take actions that might have a favorable result. Third,
the Justices would be inclined to view the entire matter as constituting
a “political question” at the highest constitutional level—that
is, between the States and their people, on the one side, and public
officials in the General Government and their clients in special-interest
groups, on the other side. Ruling for the States would allow the parties
to the dispute to settle it by political means, which as a practical
matter would provide the only method for resolution of the controversy.
Fourth, the Justices would want to avoid the loss of credibility that
the Judiciary would suffer amongst the vast mass of Americans if the
courts ruled against the States. And fifth, they would fear
the severe economic, political, and social consequences which would
undoubtedly arise if they denied the States a free hand, the present
monetary and banking systems irretrievably collapsed, and no alternative
currency were then available for the people’s use.

So
why are not more of the champions of sound money, limited government,
and free markets actively promoting the adoption of an alternative gold
currency?

The
present economic crisis presents the best opportunity since 1932 for
taking the steps necessary and sufficient to free the American people
from their thralldom to the Federal Reserve System and the vicious factions
behind it. Under the pressure of this crisis, common people are finally
awakening to their predicament, and sensing what needs to be done—because,
as Samuel Johnson once observed, nothing focuses a man’s mind
more sharply than his impending hanging. Moreover, this may be the last
opportunity of its kind for a long time to come. For if “the financial
community” can succeed in jury-rigging some supra-national
global currency and central bank, the Ponzi scheme of fiat
currency can probably be kept inflated for another generation, until
a final, utterly catastrophic breakdown sweeps across the entire world.

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So,
the American people must be convinced now—immediately,
if not sooner—ahora mismo, as our Spanish-speaking friends
would say—that this country’s economy cannot be restored
by mere repair or renovation of the existing edifice of money and banking,
but only by its total replacement. The present structure is rotten to
its very foundations, and even below. It lacks the capacity to survive—and
can claim no right to be saved. A new structure must be built from the
ground up, on a new site, according to a different plan, with better
workmen. If this can be accomplished, then for the first time in generations
Americans, indeed all of mankind, will enjoy honest weights and measures
in the monetary field—and with that reform, will have a realistic
hope to restore honest commerce and honest politics as well.

20. Lane County v.
Oregon, 74 U.S. (7 Wallace) 71 (1869); Hagar v. Reclamation District
No. 108, 111 U.S. 701 (1884).21.
U.S. Const. art. I, § 10, cl. 1. 22. U.S. Const. art.
I, § 8, cl. 5; art. I, § 10, cl. 1; and art. VI, cl. 2. Of
course, private parties may coin nonfraudulent moneys from gold or silver,
and employ those coins as media of exchange in the free market. But
as the concern of this study is how to bring the government under control
in the monetary domain, details of this matter will not be considered
here.23.See
U.S. Const. art. III, § 2, cl. 2: “In all Cases * * * in
which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original
Jurisdiction.”24.See
31 U.S.C. §§ 5119(a) and 5117(b).

Edwin Vieira, Jr., holds four
degrees from Harvard: A.B. (Harvard College), A.M. and Ph.D. (Harvard
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences), and J.D. (Harvard Law School).

For more than thirty years he has
practiced law, with emphasis on constitutional issues. In the Supreme
Court of the United States he successfully argued or briefed the cases
leading to the landmark decisions Abood v. Detroit Board of Education,
Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson, and Communications Workers of America
v. Beck, which established constitutional and statutory limitations on
the uses to which labor unions, in both the private and the public sectors,
may apply fees extracted from nonunion workers as a condition of their
employment.

He has written numerous monographs
and articles in scholarly journals, and lectured throughout the county.
His most recent work on money and banking is the two-volume Pieces
of Eight: The Monetary Powers and Disabilities of the United States
Constitution (2002), the most comprehensive study in existence of American
monetary law and history viewed from a constitutional perspective. www.piecesofeight.us

He is also the co-author (under
a nom de plume) of the political novel CRA$HMAKER:
A Federal Affaire (2000), a not-so-fictional story of an engineered crash
of the Federal Reserve System, and the political upheaval it causes. www.crashmaker.com

This is globalist
1984-ish duckspeak for “our present funny-money scam is coming apart
at the seams” and “we need to set up a new Ponzi pyramid before
the old one collapses”. But if not in its prescription, yet in its
description the United Nations states the truth.